In his first bill as a newly seated state representative, Rep. Conor Casey, D-Montpelier, is crusading for a bathroom.
Not just any bathroom. In H.34, the former Montpelier city councilor wants to see the state study the feasibility of installing a state-owned public restroom located near the Statehouse in Montpelier.
“The Statehouse and Ben & Jerry’s are the two most visited places in the state of Vermont, right?” Casey told VTDigger on Thursday. “This city is different from other municipalities in that we host massive protests on weekends, we have visitors, we have people coming off buses.”
Montpelier also is not immune to Vermont’s persistent homelessness crisis, fueled in part by a runaway housing market. A free, public restroom would provide Vermonters without shelter a place to use the bathroom and use running water for personal hygiene, Casey said.
“If you go down to the river, you will see feces by the river in Montpelier. You’ll see people setting up tents in the shadow of our Statehouse,” he said. “What message does this send?”
The House Corrections and Institutions Committee heard the bill on Thursday, and garnered mixed reactions from state and local officials. Montpelier City Manager Bill Fraser questioned stopping at a feasibility study when the need is so acute. Meanwhile, Jennifer Fitch, commissioner of the Vermont Department of Buildings and General Services, said such a facility should be under the purview of the municipality, not the state.
“For the state to say, ‘Not our problem,’ I don’t think that passes the straight face test,” Casey said. “It’s got to be a shared responsibility.”
— Sarah Mearhoff
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IN THE KNOW
Democratic lawmakers are now circulating a bill, which is expected to be introduced next week, that would guarantee 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave to all Vermont workers, including part-time and seasonal employees. The bill would provide paid time off in the event of the birth or adoption of a child, personal medical leave, and leave for people experiencing domestic violence or whose family member is called into active duty.
The program would be financed with a 0.58% payroll tax, split between the employer and employee, according to a draft of the bill, and $20 million in start-up funds from the state.
The proposal for a mandatory paid leave program goes further than a voluntary program announced by Scott last month. The governor has signaled that he would oppose any effort to fund a more expansive program through a payroll tax.
Read more about the highly anticipated legislation here.
— Lola Duffort
Vermont’s judicial system is being crushed under the weight of a backlog of court cases — and as members of the third branch told state legislators during a lengthy hearing on Thursday, there is no simple solution to get the situation under control.
“The backlog that we’re dealing with is pretty much unprecedented,” Defender General Matthew Valerio told lawmakers. “I’ve been a lawyer in Vermont for 34 years and I’ve neer seen anything like this.”
A backlog of cases has plagued Vermont courtrooms since long before Covid-19 was first detected in the state, but the pandemic and its ensuing lockdowns exacerbated the issue. Jury trials shut down completely for more than a year, and courthouses scrambled in 2020 to pivot to online proceedings. In the meantime, the courts’ lists of pending cases continued to grow.
Even now, nearly three years since Vermont’s first pandemic lockdown, the judicial system has been unable to catch up. Chief Superior Judge Thomas Zonay and State Court Administrator Therese Corsones told lawmakers that as recently as last Friday, 1,156 felony cases had been pending for longer than two years. The situation is even more dire for misdemeanors, with 2,205 cases awaiting justice for longer than two years.
Read more about Vermont’s court backlog — and how in the world to solve it — here.
— Sarah Mearhoff
Nearly two-thirds of Vermont’s municipalities — 165 of 254 — can expect a reappraisal order this year, triggered by skyrocketing property values, according to the state Department of Taxes.
“Since Covid, we’ve seen a gangbusters real estate market,” Jake Feldman, a senior fiscal analyst in the department, said in a presentation before the House Ways and Means Committee on Thursday.
Feldman, along with Jill Remick, the department’s director of property valuation and review, were presenting on the Common Level of Appraisal, or CLA. The CLA is a percentage applied to a town’s education property tax rate which serves to correct the town’s grand list property values. If a town has a low CLA, it means houses are selling for more than their grand list value. A high CLA means the opposite.
If a town’s CLA dips to 85% or rises above 115%, it triggers a mandatory reappraisal. According to the state’s 2022 equalization study, 137 municipalities have fallen below the 85% threshold. That means their properties are undervalued. By a lot.
Even the statewide CLA — a metric the tax department whipped up just for fun — fell to 83.1%. “That’s like saying, maybe the whole state needs to reappraise,” Feldman said.
Before homeowners start to worry, a reappraisal doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll pay higher taxes. If a property rises in value in line with the town average, there should be no effect. Next year, Vermonters can expect to pay 3.7% more in property taxes, even though the statewide CLA dropped more than 8%, according to the tax department.
But there’s another issue, one easily overlooked.
“There’re not enough firms to go around to do this. That’s a huge problem,” Remick said, explaining that even towns with full-time assessors almost always contract with a company to perform town-wide appraisals. In Vermont, which has averaged 16 annual reappraisals over the last decade, there simply aren’t enough appraisers to handle 165 towns.
“Of course in my head, the things that keep me up at night, it’s like, ‘There’s no house for (appraisers) to buy to move here,’ “ Remick said, eliciting anxious laughter from legislators. “It’s a very real problem.”
— Ethan Weinstein
THE FIFTH FLOOR
He’s back on top! According to fresh polling from Morning Consult, Republican Gov. Phil Scott has once again taken his place at the front of the line as America’s most popular governor, with an 81% approval rating. Only fourteen percent of Vermonters surveyed gave the guv a thumbs down.
Scott held the top spot in Morning Consult polling throughout 2021, but fell to No. 2, behind fellow Republican Gov. Charlie Baker of Massachusetts, last year.
The latest survey was conducted in the final three months of 2022, and the margin of error was one to five points.
Scott outperformed the nation’s second-most popular governor, Wyoming’s Republican Mark Gordon, by four points. Yeehaw, as they say.
Asked for a reaction to the news Thursday morning, Scott’s spokesperson Jason Maulucci was chipper: “I think it shows how much Vermonters value pragmatic, balanced and strong leadership!” (Exclamation point his, not my own flourish.)
— Sarah Mearhoff
ON THE HILL
U.S. Sen Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., told students at Essex High School Thursday that he wasn’t there to lecture them on why it can be dangerous to use drugs.
But the senator, who’s slated to take the helm of a powerful committee on health care, spent part of a town hall forum doing just that — urging students to share their strategies for coping with stress other than drugs and, specifically, vapes.
“Look, if people are dealing with problems, drugs are not a solution to their problems. Communicating with other people seems, to me, to be a better direction. Am I right? Am I wrong? What’s your experience?” he asked the students Thursday. “Well, tell me.”
Read more about Sanders’ sage advice for the youths, and what they had to say to him, here.
— Shaun Robinson
WHAT WE’RE READING
Middlebury College figure skater competes in World University Games (Vermont Public)
Rutland school board settles on ‘Rutland’ as the name for school sports teams (VTDigger)
Cyberattack takes down land-records management system used by many Vermont towns (VTDigger)
